1. United States
2. Ohio
3. Letter

As we look ahead to 2026, please consider a different line of attack in legislating. Ashtabula County is a very poor performer on the county health rankings. A rare disease known as Cowden Syndrome is named for an index patient who was born in southern Ashtabula County. It would be beneficial to perform a pilot program genetically screening our K-12 students at least in Ashtabula County for conditions such as Cowden Syndrome as well as many of the other thousands of rare diseases. Having “healthcare freedom” is meaningless if people have no clue what is going on with their own health! There are known strong links between Cowden Syndrome and not just autism but also ADHD it would save money on the front-end to let families know about potential lifelong conditions now. Broadly screening and providing diagnostics to an entire population thanks to the vastly reduced cost of genetic testing these days would help reduce the cost to our healthcare system in the long run. Spending a dollar today is worth potentially averting spending a hundred dollars down the road. Since launching such a program requires legislation to waive prohibitions in the Ohio Revised Code action would be needed in the General Assembly. As we see throughout Ashtabula County, "healthcare freedom" has an insanely high cost with reduced lifespans and abnormally large amounts of preventable hospital utilization when frankly just providing some information would allow that freedom to actually means something. I trust that you'll be able to consider this in your efforts to further the work of governing our state.